As Robert Mugabe continues to dig in his heels, I’m reminded of a conversation I had a while back with a couple folks I know in Zimbabwe. When we asked them how we should pray for them, one of them said, “Pray that God will strike Mugabe with a lightning bolt.” We were rather taken aback by that, but they know their country can’t begin to recover until Mugabe is gone, and in their view, the only way he’ll leave is feet first. As long as he’s alive, they don’t believe he’ll ever relinquish power. It’s hard to argue with them.
There are those who would have trouble with the idea of praying for the death of our enemies; that point of view came up last summer when the Thinklings discussed this question. Certainly I understand the concern, given that Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us; but he doesn’t tell us what to pray for those who persecute us. Clearly, we should strive not to pray anger and hatred against our enemies, but I don’t think that means we can’t or shouldn’t pray that God would bring them down, one way or another. I remain convinced as I was at the time of that discussion that David’s prayers serve as a model for us on this point, boiling down roughly to this: “God, either bring my enemies to repentance or strike them down, I don’t care which, but remove them as my enemies.” As Jared put it at the time, “in extreme cases, in unrepentant, ongoing, debilitating situations of abuse on those who cannot protect themselves, I am driven to pray for God’s justice in a radical deliverance. So the motivation is not ‘kill this person’—it’s ‘make them stop or make them gone.'”
That’s where I am with regard to Robert Mugabe. If God wills to strike him dead, good. If God wills to strike him to his knees in full repentance, good—indeed, better; better that he be redeemed, and besides, with all he’s done, I think for him, repentance would hurt more. But whichever kind of heart attack God may send, I’m praying he sends it soon, for the sake of my friends, and the sake of all Zimbabwe. Amen.
It’s a difficult thing, isn’t it?
As an update of sorts, I still intermittently pray that prayer about the same person I was praying it about back then. He’s actually had a health scare recently, and I began to wonder . . .
But he’s apparently “fine” right now, still free to abuse and demoralize without impunity.
I don’t wish him dead, just stopped. But I have a hard time spending more emotional and spiritual anguish over desire to see him repent than I do over desire to see his victims delivered.
I certainly don’t think this sort of prayer is out of bounds for actual murderers and orchestrators of terror like Mugabe.
Yeah, it is; and sometimes, it’s even more difficult when God doesn’t remove people like that–when he lets them keep doing what they’re doing.
When I think about it, I pray about that person you were praying about–partly because the situation clearly requires it, and partly as a representative of all the people like that who we wish would be removed.